Rumor: New Mac Mini Coming to Macworld 2009 — Apple will launch an upgrade to its low-end desktop, the Mac Mini, at January's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, according to an Apple corporate employee who contacted Wired.com. — The source, who wished to remain anonymous (to keep his job) …

Apple Loses Shine as Mac Sales Slow — PC Maker Eschews Discounts Even as Rivals Slash Prices and Consumers Pull Back; Worries for 2009 — Even Apple Inc. is beginning to suffer in this year's dismal holiday season, and worries are mounting the recession will weigh on its business next year.

Yahoo! Mail rolls out a smarter inbox — You may have seen today's news announcing the next generation of Yahoo! Mail — rolling out a “smarter inbox"experience to users. One way to make an inbox smarter: make applications that can work within it, opening up Yahoo! Mail to content and services built outside the Yahoo! network.

10.5.6 here...snappieness™ ensues — 10.5.6 is out, go grab it from Software update (377mb here!) or via the standalone installer. — Here are the details or check below. It looks like there are many performance improvements in this one! Yes, we are feeling the snappieness™, are you?

Revealed: Amazon staff punished for being ill — Amazon, Britain's most popular website for Christmas shopping, is making its staff work seven days a week and threatening them with the sack if they take time off sick. — The company charges among the lowest prices for products ranging …

Twitter Humiliates MySpace — Google Friend Connect launched with Twitter this morning, a big win for Google in the fight for control over user logins on third party sites. Recent speculation was that Twitter would be partnering with Facebook to integrate Connect first.

SlideShare Sends PowerPoint To The Cloud With New Plugin — SlideShare, a startup that we've likened to a YouTube equivalent for PowerPoint presentations, has released a new plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows users to edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts.

Google off list of 20 most trusted companies — (12-14) 16:40 PST SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Verizon and FedEx for the first time have made an annual ranking of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States. — Google, however, dropped off the list …

The Future of the Internet III — A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.

Facebook's new value: $1.3 billion? — With more than 120 million users, Mark Zuckerberg's social network continues to grow, kudzu-like. And yet it is worth far less today than the $15 billion it commanded a year ago. Why is that? — One could talk about Facebook's fast-growing headcount …

Anyone Buying Up Huge Blocks Of Yahoo? (YHOO) — A reader sends the following query: — Any idea who might be buying large YHOO blocks at the close every day as well as 8.3 million shares today at 5:01 PM NY time? Seems like whoever it is, they should have enough of a position to be having to file a 13D shortly?

The Extraordinary Happenings At BitTorrent — “I have never seen anything like this” said a corporate law partner at a large silicon valley law firm. He was referring to the undoing of a $17 million venture round at BitTorrent and subsequent recapitalization that we reported yesterday.

The Web is in Motion via Movable Type Pro — Today, we're launching a new application for Movable Type Pro, called Motion. If you're just looking for the headline to put on your blog, you can think of it this way: — Microblogging like Pownce or Tumblr or Twitter plus